Chapters 1 and 2 of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology

After reading the first chapter, it makes me kind of scared to enter into the world of teaching, but also very excited. I am scared because teaching isn't going to be what I saw my mother doing. I excited though because I am learning about technology now, and I can be prepared for what schools are going to expect (no technology) and what the students are going to need (more understanding of technology). I feel that it is not a good idea for schools to not give money to teachers for technology because students from a very young age are using more and more technology a day, from cell phones to computers to iPads. Students are beginning to learn for themselves at a young age too, and when they come into school, not having technology available will stunt their learning.

As soon as I started reading chapter 2, I found it incredibly interesting that technology does so much. Page 9 has a list of things that technology does: "reading and interacting with the web; writing memos and sending email; computing with spreadsheets and statistical analysis programs; analyzing problems with data visualization tools; creating social networking sites; marketing with digital video tools; and making presentations with PowerPoint."

"Reading, writing, calculating, and thinking are what education is all about."

This statement is so true, yet teachers and/or administrators don't want to stray away from the traditional teaching, using books and lectures. In order to read, write, calculate, and think in today's age, there needs to be an understanding of technology. This will in turn allow students to think in new ways that will advance their thinking. This chapter really nails in the idea that everything is changing: how we think, how we communicate, and even how we learn. Communication isn't just now taking a test and telling the teacher, "Oh, I don't really understand this." Instead, there are so many ways to now communicate, through technology, through classroom work using other assessments other than worksheets and tests..

The chapter addresses a topic of "just-in-time learning." This notion is that whenever you need to learn something else in order to accomplish a task, you can find out what you need to know. This notions contradicts the tradition notion of educators that you need to learn everything you can possible while in school just in case you need to know it later. With this said, we spend over 15 years in school learning stuff that we don't really need to know. It isn't a waste of time, but to the person who knows exactly what they are good at, such as the student who drops out and becomes the inventor of the computer, they spend time in class not really learning. "The skills necessary for just-in-time learning are more skill-based than fact-based." This learning of skills will be more beneficial to everyone because they will be able to apply those skills to anything in life.

This chapter also focuses on enhancing learning through customization, learner control (a part of customization), interaction, scaffolding (a part of education, whether you incorporate technology or not), games and simulation, multimedia, publication, and reflection (again, an important part of education whether there is the incorporation of technology or not).

Credibility of Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division

http://www.dhmo.org/

This website has a lot of positives going for it. For example, it was last updated today. That shows that the person creating this keeps on working on it. Also, there are supporters for the page. For example, the translation is powered by AltaVista Babel fish and the page is hosted by AgoraNet. AgoraNet is a site for small businesses. I appreciate that the website ables you to email them about questions. They say they can't reply to every one of the messages, but they do read them all. The website offers payment options for purchasing DHMO goods, but I probably wouldn't buy anything from this website because when I looked at the goods in their store, there weren't even real pictures; they were cartoon t-shirts. I would probably use the information from this website because their information is given in a format that is reliable. For example, their FAQs aren't questions about how to pronounce a last name. Instead, the questions are "what is Dihydrogen Monoxide" and "should I be concerned about Dihydrogen Monoxide?"

Credibility of All About Explorers

http://allaboutexplorers.com/

I found something interesting right away while first investigating the website. When I clicked on the authors link on the top of the page, it led me to a list of authors. At the bottom, it said, "Hmm, not buying it? Click here for the real story." I clicked and it lead me to a page with only two authors on it. I can't tell if that is reliable or not. I actually do not like it. However, I do appreciate that they offered the "authors" link. The site also had a link for references. However, on the references page, the first thing you see is "Reliable Research Sources." It's almost like they feel the need to sell you the fact that their references are reliable. Instead, what they should have done was take that out, because before I saw that, I did think the sources could be reliable. I also looked for the credit for the website, and at the bottom of the page, there was a link for "wordpress." I clicked on it, and wordpress happens to be a blogging site. This could be reliable if the authors were scholars. However, if I were going to do research, this isn't a website I would use.

Credibility of Martin Luther King Jr. website

http://martinlutherking.org/

I was not very pleased to observe this site because I felt it was very racist. Just because Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American doesn't mean he was a rapper or that he celebrated Kwanzaa. There also wasn't an author, except for "stormfront," which when I clicked on it, it lead me to a "White Pride World Wide" website. Unless I am a racist looking for more racist support, there would be no use of this website for me. Terrible website. This is not accurate, it is not valid, and there is no reliability.

Credibility on ZPi: Save the Pacific Northwest...

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

I am thinking that this website is not a credible source for a few reasons. However, to begin with, there is one thing that could fool a reader. The site was recently updated in September, with recent "news" from October. This could fool someone because it shows that the person creating this site is keeping up with recent news; it isn't just a gig that someone made up ten years ago. This is the only positive to this site. Using the guidelines from kathyschrock.net, finding information about the author wasn't easy. I found it in the FAQ area, and the frequently asked questions just happened to be about his last name and how to pronounce it. Odd questions to be frequently asking.. Also, at the bottom of the page, there was a line that said this website had no connections to any other schools, universities, or scholars except for "Wild Haggis Conservation Society." Most societies are for students. I couldn't even click on a link from the page to investigate on the society. Also, this is just personal value, but the page was very hard to read and didn't act as a scholarly page. I wouldn't trust information from this website.

Creating a screencast

This was my first time ever creating a screencast, and let's just say, the end product is better than I thought it was going to be the whole time creating it. There definitely were some difficulties in creating a screencast. For example, I had a difficult time getting the jing capture to fit my whole screen since it only goes to a certain length. I also had personal difficulty explaining wallwisher.com while trying to read my script. I tried explaining without reading, but my train of thought went askew. Next time, I might try to memorize what I would like to say. Creating a screencast was also fun, though, because I got to hear myself using advanced technology. I'm not usually advanced in technology and doing a screencast proves to myself that I can work with technology. I look forward to using screencasting in my classroom, and I might use screencasting for other things, just for fun (maybe even my wedding website!). I'm just proud of myself that I created something that someone else might be able to use in the future! I think I might like to post a screencast on how to create a screencast; might be kind of fun! Here is the link to what I created!!http://www.screencast.com/t/2sazEegQz0et  Enjoy!

Epilogue of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts

I enjoyed the epilogue: it wasn't anything that I expected. It was a story of a teacher who, in the matter of 15 minutes, created a literature homework assignment and sent an email to the parents notifying them that their child has homework, scanned a compiled list of summaries that links to all the work his students did last night, has scanned a New York Times article that his journalism students will use, bookmarked and saved to his Diigo toolbar, looked as his RSS feeds to read up on the lastest news, and organized his email inbox, all in time to open his classroom door to the sound of happy students. The epilogue pretty much summed up the entire book, with all of the uses that technology offers, from podcasts to RSS feeds to weblogs to bookmarking. As an educator, it is important to understand how to use technology for yourself, the parents, and most importantly, the students. In the epilogue, the teacher set up a connection between the teacher and parents where parents can receive a notification that their child has homework that night. I think it reallly is incredible that the teacher did all of this in such a short time. This makes more time to work with the students, and also more time to focus on the students. I definitely intend to use as much technology in my classroom that I can, for my benefit and most importantly, my students' benefit. As a special education teacher, research is coming out showing that technology is one of the most beneficial tactics for students in a special education setting. With that said, I will do everything I can to learn about technology for the benefit of my students.

Chapter 10 of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts

Chapter 10's focus was mainly on what it all means, what this whole books means. The line that stuck out most to me is that we, as educators and people using technology, "are tapping into the potential of a World Wide Web that is a conversation, not a lecture, where knowledge is shaped and acquired through a social process, and where ideas are presented as a starting point for dialogue, not an ending point" (Siemens, 2005, p.148). I thought that this quote really summed up the whole book, with wikis and podcasts, technology in the classroom, and interacting as a whole world. In the classroom, this is also very true. Bringing technology into the classroom in today's age is like bringing in a conversation because we don't have to just lecture anymore. Even in a traditional history classroom, where it is typical to lecture, there are so many options for students to be engaged in the classroom and learn beyond just a book's potential. This brings me to the chapter's focus on the big shifts in how to effectively teach students.
Big Shift one focuses on the information we teach being current, unlike a textbook who's information can be outdated in just a few years. Another shift is that the teacher can teach and learn and the students can learn and teach as well. Teaching is also the conversation. Students teaching other students and the teacher show the students that their voices and opinions matter. All ideas are starting points, not ending points. Even if a student doesn't give the correct answer, that opens the door to explaining why that isn't correct or imploring why that answer might ok in some situations. It's an opportunity to explain more.
One of my favorite shifts is the Big Shift 9: Mastery is the product, not the test. Mastery isn't just passing the test anymore. There are several ways for students to show that they understand and have mastered the content. A simple paper test isn't the best assessment for all students, and technology offers a way for students to be accurately assessed. I also appreciate the fact that the chapter addressed the issue that what gets put on the internet isn't always truthful, that we need to be critical consumers. This is a great learning experience for everyone, students and teachers, because it requires the reader to use critical thinking, to determine if what is being displayed is the truth.
The big shifts used in this chapter are a great resource for the classroom because they are "starting points" for discussion and reminders that the internet offers its own resources, and being used the right way allows a student to get the most out of his or her education. Being a teacher is today's age, I will use these shifts and be reminded of the changing internet and technology and that this is just the beginning.

20 things I learned about Browsers and the Web

I enjoyed reading this online book, with the url: http://www.20thingsilearned.com/en-US. It was very informative about the nitty gritty about the internet. I had no idea what URL meant or that apps are simply web browser applications that are very safe because they don't require you to have to download anything. I also knew nothing about how the internet was started, or the TCP/IP, or Internet Protocol Suite. One of the things that I kind of already knew about was that emails or pictures or any data sent to another place on the internet is broken up into smaller pieces. The book explains that these smaller chunks are "packets." The more packets you can send, the larger the "bandwidth," or the amount of data you can send over your interconnection per second.
I've also wondered what "the cloud" was because I've seen it promoted on television commercials. What the cloud means is that data can migrate beyond the boundaries of your computer and can be accessed anywhere around the world. Even if a truck crushes your computer, your data can still be accessed on an internet-connected computer. I enjoyed this book; I especially liked that it was like a real book.

Digital Nation

Wow. There were a lot of angles in this video on the influences of multitasking, the influence of technology on your life career, how technology can add years to a life, and how to teach using technology. When I first started watching the video, the topic was multitasking and the students at MIT, how they are the smartest and the most wired students in the nation right now. There was a test given to the students who were the most severe multitaskers. They showed only a few clips, but even with those clips, I realized that I am a terrible multitasker! This makes me think that my students better not be multitasked because they won't benefit as much. However, the video also discussed how students of today's age are natives to technology compared to the adults of today, who would be considered the immigrants. Technology is second nature to them. No one knows what the effects of a lot of technology will be yet; for example, look at how long it took for everyone to realize that smoking is bad for us, but who knows? Multitasking with technology could prove beneficial.
Another aspect of the video was teaching with technology. One commentator said that using all of the technology has made the students' attention span very short. As soon as we have an urge, we need to fulfill that urge. He calls today's teaching "instant-gratification education." One student said a quote that makes me think: "Sometimes the teachers bore us so we go online.." We need to stop that quote right at "sometimes the teachers bore us.." If students are getting bored, we as teachers are doing something wrong. It was proven in the video that using internet can increase math scores and attendance, can lower violence, and can open the mind in new ways. Obviously this means that students have the capacity and desire to learn, so if students are saying they're bored so they go check Facebook, we need to change our tactics. Technology has proven facts that it can be beneficial to a student's learning experience, and in today's age, students will have to learn technology before graduating in order to have a decent career, so we need to learn technology and learn how to best teach while using technology and keeping the kids engaged. In South Korea, students as young as 6 know how to use the internet as well as what is appropriate on the internet. One commentator said that America might not be able to do this like the Koreans, but we can find our ways to use the internet for the right uses and to grasp its full potential.

Designing an IWB

Creating a SMARTboard lesson plan was very instructional and a valuable learning experience because SMARTboards are used in nearly every classroom. It is also a useful technology to use with and teach to students of all ages. When designing this lesson plan, a lot of effort was put into searching through the several websites that offer help with this! I bookmarked 20 websites that I loved the ideas. When finally deciding on a lesson, I ended up using ideas from 3 websites. I then went straight into the SMARTnotebook, and started playing around with what the notebook offers. I didn't end up using the first lesson I designed simply because after playing around with it another day, I found so many more cool things, like the gallery for pictures and animations. After I met with my partner, I was given advice to make things more interesting looking, such as adding color in the background. I'm a believer in keeping the font normal and black, so things aren't too overstimulating; however, I did add some color. I was tempted to use the gradients offerred, but again, it might be too overstimulation, especially in special education. My biggest struggle came when designing the game at the end. I needed to create a finish line, but I couldn't find one. Instead, I used a hurdle, used the green mover to tilt the hurdle and then tilted the number line. In the end, it really did look like a finish line. I also needed to figure out how to flip the runner, which was actually easy. All I needed to use was the right click button.
Creating an IWB impacts my future career as a teacher because research is coming out with support for the use of SMARTboards in Special Education classrooms. Since I am going into Special Education, I need to understand at minimum beyond the basics. This lesson gave me insight to the abilities that not only the SMARTboard but also other technologies possess. I look forward to sharing my lesson plan, especially because I will get constructive criticism back that will make my lesson plan even better!
https://uwsp.courses.wisconsin.edu/d2l/common/viewFile.d2lfile/Database/MTgzODQ4MTA/331%20smartboard%20lesson%20plan.docx?ou=1850169
https://uwsp.courses.wisconsin.edu/d2l/common/viewFile.d2lfile/Database/MTgzODQ4MTE/new%20smart%20board%20lesson%20plan.notebook?ou=1850169

What it was like creating a podcast

I made my podcast with a partner which definitely had its benefits! We could bounce ideas off of each other really well, since we both had read the article and agreed on most points. Also, when creating the podcast, she mainly controlled it because it was on her computer, but she had the extra set of eyes to point out things she couldn't find. There was a lot of great teamwork! There were definitely some struggles, however. For example, neither of us could remember that in order to move the sections, we had to stop the whole thing. Even at the end, when we had already been putting in four hours of effort, we still kept forgetting to stop everything else! When we did happen to remember to stop everything, we found everything was much easier to move when we moved sections onto the same line so there were only one or two lines (kind of like cutting and pasting, which was used, too!). Overall, making this project was a fun learning experience! We worked well passed midnight, and even some more the next day, so it took a lot of time and effort. Overall, though, I definitely plan on using podcasts again someday!

Free Tools Challenge #1: Wallwisher – Words That Stick

Free Tools Challenge #1: Wallwisher – Words That Stick

Chapter 9 reflection

This chapter was about social networks, and their educational benefits. I suppose I will start off saying that there are several educational tools; however, I am very skeptical about allowing the use of Facebook and ning.com in the classroom. I am open to using them, however, because it can teach students how to use Facebook the right way, and it is a way to monitor what students are doing on Facebook, and maybe to prevent cyberbullying?
The chapter mentioned that Facebook has this new tool, "courses." This is simply a closed place that students and teachers can exchange information, answer questions, write on each other's walls, and create a shared space for materials. This is great for students who tend to be more quiet, and also for students to ask questions. This can also be used as a great support tool, such as the example where a student had a serious health issue and the other students helped support her and keep her informed.
There is also another option, if teachers don't want to use Facebook: Ning.com. Ning is kind of like Facebook, except that it is totally self-contained so that it is entirely private to only those who are invited to see it. One great use of Ning is that students can practice their writing skills and get constructive feedback from teachers and students. Again, this is another way to show students constructive use of the internet.
I understand the uses of Facebook and Ning, but I would feel much better using Ning versus Facebook. However, using either will definitely keep students engaged. However, what I don't understand is why bring in Facebook when it gives students the opportunity to check their statuses, not be engaged, etc. when instead you could use blogger or flickr, both with the pictures, videos, and discussions.

Chapter 7 Reflection

This chapter focused on the use of Flickr, a web-based digital photography tool. It has also recently evolved into a video-hosting tool, as well. After reading this chapter, I would love to use Flickr in the classroom! I am  very interested in making sure parents know what is going on in the classroom, and this is a way to do just that. I also like how the chapter says that Flickr is a way to "celebrate the good work that students do every day...by putting it online for all (or some to see)" (102). One thing I am worried about, though, is making sure the pictures and videos put up online are appropriate. Introducing Flickr to my students will have its educational benefits, but it is also introducing them to yet another socializing tool. What they do with it outside of class is up to them, but it is up to me as their teacher to teach them the importance of keeping what goes online private and appropriate. One way that Flickr helps to control photos is by making a limit on the "free" version of Flickr of 500 photos. Also, if you want to allow only certain people view the pictures, such as classmates, there is an option to "invite" members to see your pictures. This way, no one else in the public can view them.
I really like the educational benefits from Flickr. For example, it is a great discussion tool. Not only can students post interactive learning tools, such as the example with Jane Goodall's necessities, but students can discuss information about Jane Goodall, what she did, and what were her accomplishments. This is a great way for students to interact and learn more. I also like how Flickr is in touch with Google Reader. This is a fantastic way to show students the benefits of the internet and how they can stay interconnected. It makes it much easier to teach and understand.